Editor's Note
The connectedness of the group members' semester issues;
Throughout the past semester Spencer has been writing about the most recent policy change in the LDS Church affecting LGBTQ couples as well as their children. I (Robbie) have been writing about LGBTQ Mormons & the issues relating to that. While our topics are slightly different, they’re also very much the same. They both focus on how church policies have affected church members, as well as how these issues have correlated with suicide, depression, and homelessness.
Revision choices for the papers;
When selecting the papers I wanted to use for my revisions, my first thought was “which two papers are thus far my best work?” It would be easier to improve lesser quality, but to improve what was already my best efforts would take a lot more thought. Also, I wanted to pick the two that were the most educational, which was my report and my proposal (the same two I thought were my best). Lastly I wanted to pick the two that felt like they had the biggest call to action tied to them— luckily, the same two papers fit all this criteria.
The first revision piece Spencer did was the report. The reason this was chosen is because it was first off something that tied in strongly with everything else on the magazine, as well as had a lot of very strong facts and persuasive points before the revision even started. It made sense to include it as it was, so Spencer added this on as his first revised piece.
Translation/adaptation choices for other papers or smaller projects;
Between my memoir and my profile essay, I first thought “which would make more sense to translate or adapt?” My profile is difficult because I can only use the information that was already in there, considering it was a profile on a specific couple. So, I either would have to get more facts on them, or make it not about them all that much anymore. To make it not even about them would take away anything about that essay that sets it apart from the rest, so it wouldn’t even by a “translation”, it would be starting from scratch, which isn’t the point. The memoir had a great moral behind it, but was a little too personal on who was in the story, so I took that out, and translated it into something totally different, all while still keeping the same morals of the original.
For spencer, his position argument was his adaptation piece for the magazine. The reason Spencer chose this piece was because this paper as it was had a very strong call to action and was extremely educational. The paper had strong morals and principles attached to it that really needed to be included in the essay, but there were still some bigger changes that could be made to take it from where it was, to even greater, but still keep those same messages attached. Also, because changing the audience on this one required a few more changes, so it more quickly became a translation.
Why specific papers/projects were excluded from the magazine? Offer specific reasons for the group's choices and explain those reasons with evidence from the work. Create hyperlinks to work in the magazine when you discuss that work in the editors' note.
As I mentioned above, the profile just didn’t make sense to put in there. Adding it as a revised profile would require either going back to the couple it was about, or changing enough of the purpose to make it not even remotely the same essay. This, in addition to the fact that it really didn’t have a great educational part nor was it very strong in the call to action part. The whole thing was better off just throwing aside as far as the magazine is concerned.
Spencer didn’t include his flash memoir for pretty similar reasons to why I didn’t include my profile. It wasn’t among his best work, and it really just didn’t fit. Personal stories such as that memoir didn’t have a strong connection or tie to the subject and audience we were addressing, and while it had great points, they weren’t as connected to the purposes of our other essays, so it made sense to just not include it.
Second, the editors' note should go on to describe what the group discovered about the writing and research process: What did group members discover about their research and writing when making revision choices as a group? What did the group learn about the writing process throughout the genres? What advice would you give other groups for working on this part of the project?
One of the biggest things we learned through the magazine section of our writing process is what exactly it means to write in a group. We were only two people, and we practically had the same topic, so we didn’t think it would be too difficult to merge our essays into one magazine with one purpose, and we realized just how drastically different our essays were. Neither of our essays would make total sense nor be totally convincing to the audience of the other, and we had far different approaches as to how to best fix the same problem. We learned how to merge those into one purpose and be on the same page.
Finally, the editors' note should provide an evaluation of your group's effort and final product. How strong is the magazine in terms of the main objectives? How well researched is it? How well designed is it? Where is it perhaps lacking?
We feel that the final product of our magazine has turned out to be pretty strong. We’ve transformed a couple different objectives into one main objective in a relatively short amount of time. Between the two of us there’s an extensive amount of research, with reliable sources to back ourselves up. It’s overall design is pretty good and everything is shaping out quite nicely.
